Then there is the Four Seasons Abu Dhabi. With all the tasteful, understated luxury you would expect from Four Seasons. Beautiful design which effortlessly brings together tactile textures, an abundance of natural light with countless artworks from local artists. And dining which ranges from informal Italian in Cafe Milano to a 1920s style Chicago steakhouse in the shape of Butcher & Still.

But our real destination was to be discovered discretely hidden away. One of the most beautifully designed bars we’ve visited. Service that succeeds in being naturally friendly and effortlessly efficient. And an exceptionally creative drinks menu that takes the music at the heart of the bar to a whole new level to deliver drinks that were simply sumptuous.

The bar is Saikindo and having had the pleasure of experiencing it over a couple of exceptional evenings we sat down with Beverage Director Marco Corallo to find out more…

Marco, we’re in Saikindo a few hours before service, but let’s go back to the beginning and discover a little more about you – did you find bartending or did it find you?

When I was about 12 years old in Italy my step-grandfather owned a vineyard and I helped out with the winemaking, so I wanted to become a sommelier. At the same time my father owned a nightclub and I did shifts there just opening bottles for gin and tonics and such, which I also loved. So let’s say that the bar found me.

After high school I studied economics, worked for two years in fashion, then met a friend who was a bartender and they invited me to join them. That was 20 years ago and I’ve never looked back.

20 years is a long time, so let’s talk about the journey from Italy to Saikindo, because we actually first met you at Artesian in London

After working as a tailor I moved into hospitality and opened several coffee shops and a wine bar in Italy. Then I contacted a hospitality agency in Washington DC recommended by my cousin who was a chef there. It was 2010 and they suggested a role as a bar back in Atmosphere at Armani hotel in Dubai. I spoke no English and had almost no bar experience but took a leap of faith!

I progressed to assistant bartender and then to junior sommelier in the restaurant. Then the following year I had the chance to join The Savoy as a sommelier in River Restaurant. While there I met Erik Lorinze who was heading up The American Bar and Chris Moore who was the Head Bartender of the Beaufort Bar. They really inspired me and I fell in love with bartending again.

I moved to Jumeirah at Etihad Towers in Abu Dhab, and worked at a few other places including Zuma, had another stint in London at Artesian, then spent three years in California opening a software company for hospitality training. But I missed being in bars so much that I decided to come back to it in 2024.

Then I heard about Four Seasons Abu Dhabi opening a beautiful bar and the team thought I would be great for it.

What was their pitch to you and the part they wanted you to play?

They wanted to create an amazing bar where the inspiration was Japanese listening bars. It wasn’t about just opening a hotel bar but Bob Suri, our general manager, said he wanted it to be a completely new offering with its own unique identity, where the people working there were having as much fun as the guests. I love music, I collect vinyl, love Japanese places and food, and, of course, I love cocktails. So when they pitched Saikindo I felt like it was made for me.

Before we come on to the bar itself it would interesting to hear your observations on bar culture in Abu Dhabi

I’ve worked in other bars in Abu Dhabi, as well as in Dubai, and the interest from people in these regions for quality cocktail bars is really growing. They like the craftsmanship of bartenders, but it’s more than just the cocktails, they’re looking to get an experience. Dubai is extremely good at that with great places with great identities, but Abu Dhabi was kind of lacking this. There are some really good restaurant bars here and large volume ones. But no premium cocktail bars that could function as a single identity. I think this was something that was missing and people were craving. One thing our guests are continuously telling us now is that they were looking for something like this in Abu Dhabi.

Which brings us to Saikindo, at what stage was the project when you arrived?

Bob and the team already had the concept and the name. The design was completed but the space itself was an empty shell. I saw the renderings from the design company and I was like, wow, it looks beautiful, but in the past the places have never looked as good as renderings. This was the first time that the place actually looked better than the renderings!

I got attached to the bar seeing it develop every day; mirrors, tapestry, furniture, everything going in. What I really had the power to influence, though, was the team and the service style.

Four of our favourites from Aji No Hibiki, the music-inspired menu at Saikindo

Loungin’

Siete Misterios mezcal, citrus shochu, Baldoria Dry Umami vermouth

Musical inspiration: LL Cool J, Hip Hop-R&B, 100bpm

Why we love it: Simple, elegant, understated appearance with an eye-catching black, red and blue cheese olives garnish. A very pleasing marriage of a classic martini with a serious mezcal.

Am I wrong

Micher’s Sour Mash whiskey, shöchü, sansho pepper, bee pollen, balsamic yuzu caviar

Musical inspiration: Anderson .Paak, Hip Hop, 115bpm

Why we love it: An incredibly satisfying Old Fashioned style drink with rich layers of smooth whiskey balanced with pepper and honey.

Masterpiece

Farmer’s gin caraway, mandarin, umeshu, citrus gels

Musical inspiration: Sault, Soul-R&B, 76bpm

Why we love it: An understated appearance that belies a perfect combination of rich citrus with hints of anise, making for a perfect pre-dinner aperitif.

Forget Me Nots

Sake, shochu, dry sherry, Sakura vermouth, sansho pepper cordial, choice of four gel garnishes – passionfruit and vanilla, lychee and almond, apple and lemongrass, watermelon and mint

Musical inspiration: Patrice Rushen, post-disco, 115bpm

Why we love it: Visually it’s the drink everyone will ask about when they see it being served to another guest. Four glass petals each containing a different choice of gel garnish, through which the cocktail is poured. Not just a visual gimmick, though, but a satisfying and surprisingly dry drink.

What was your vision for this?

There is a fanatic book called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara which I’d been reading and this really influenced me. Integrating ideas from this with the Four Seasons manual, I wrote a guide for all staff for the Saikindo style of service. This was my first contribution and I felt I this could really allow me to influence the soul of the bar.

So imagine we bumped into you in the street and you say, “I’m running Saikindo”, how would you sum it up in a few sentences?

Alright. I love this! Saikindo is a cocktail bar inspired by the listening bars of Tokyo. When you enter you’re transported from Abu Dhabi to a completely new city, you’re almost walking into a Tokyo club. You’re listening to music on vinyl through wooden speakers. The music is perfect. The light is beautiful. The drinks are well crafted. But most importantly, the team that is going to serve you genuinely care of how you feel, and wants to make sure that you feel heard, seen and valued.

That approach is reflected in the name itself, right?

Absolutely. Saikindo literally translates as “how are you doing or how have you been?” I wanted to incorporate the name into our philosophy, so the first thing we ask people when they come into the bar is “How are doing tonight?”

The answer could be ‘I’m doing great”, “I love the bar”, “It’s my first visit”. We get the information from the very first question and we can use that to actually create experiences that are tailored to that person so they feel valued. They are spending their time here and time is the biggest luxury we have. Not buildings. It’s not the hotel. It’s their time. And when they decide to spend time in Saikindo we want it to be a great time and tailor the experience to them.

As well your attention to detail for service, you’ve also brought amazing creativity to your new menu

The first two team members of Saikindo were myself and Ann Pinsudamy, my Head Mixologist. We converted the former hotel bar into our laboratory and the menu we created was the two of us bouncing ideas off each other. We were talking the same language, the same sound waves. It was just beautiful.

The beauty of it was that when we first started, we didn’t even have the laboratory, so we worked it all out on paper.

So what’s the concept?

When I was in London I heard about a Heston Blumenthal dish at his restaurant the Fat Duck that used the sound of the sea. I’d also been reading about how music affects taste and what is called sonic seasoning. This came back to me when I started to work on the Saikindo menu.

My menus have always been conceptual. I want people to have a great drink, but if they want to know more, there is a storytelling point to it. Music is at the heart of Saikindo, music playing vinyl through an analogue sound system, I wanted to incorporate this into the drinks.

Then the light bulb came on and I remembered the music taste effect. I went deep into research and found examples of scientific papers, such as one that explained that the particular pitch of a song can affect taste. For example, caffeine relates to a pitch between 40 to 50 decibels, high pitched notes are usually connected to sweet or sour or crisp, while low pitches are salty, bitter and soft. I was like, wow, this is very interesting.

So this was the start of the menu?

Yes! We created an AI model and fed in all these scientific papers. Then we would feed in a song and get it to analyse the low pitched notes, the high pitched notes, the tones, the BPMs and so on.

Each song suggested a different flavour profile which would suggest a cocktail’s taste; the percentage of salty, bitter, umami and so on. This would then inspire us a certain style of drink and particular ingredients. We called menu Aji No Hibiki which translates as “resonance of flavours”.

Can you give us a few examples from Aji No Hibiki?

We put Loungin’ by LL Cool J into the AI model and discovered it’s 0% sour, but 50% umami, 30% bitter and 20% salty. This gave us our blueprint for a cocktail. We used dry umami vermouth and shochu, olive brine to make it salty, while mezcal added bitter notes. We respect the percentage of what AI is telling us but then we use our creativity to interpret it into the actual drink. This profile suggested a style of Dirty Martini.

The Big Poppa from the Notorious B.I.G. was 20% bitter, 10% sour, 10% salty and 30% bitter and this immediately made us think of an equal parts ratio, and we went in a Negroni direction, but with extra umami notes.

How long did this journey take from start to completion?

Four months to create 12 cocktails. We working the whole time, 12 hours a day, but the bar hadn’t opened so we could really focus on it.  It was just me and Ann creating the drinks. 

There were a lot of trials because it wasn’t about finding an ingredient and making it work in the drink, but actually creating new kinds of ingredient. It was very time consuming.

They are incredibly creative, actually intellectual drinks, but also very approachable

Yes that’s true. I didn’t want to create a bar where people felt intimidated when they opened the cocktail menu or for guests to find it too gimmicky or geeky. I want every single person who walks in to enjoy the drinks. And our clientele is so varied, people from offices and finance, local crowds and obviously hotel guests.

Then we have bartenders from other bars coming to us. I can talk to them for an hour about the drinks, but I can explain it in ten seconds to a person that doesn’t want to know about the details.

Non-alcoholic cocktails are generally growing in popularity but given the region they must be particularly important?

We wanted to create spirit-free versions of the drinks to taste, look and feel exactly the same as their alcoholic counterparts. When you go out but aren’t drinking alcohol you can sometimes feel left out because there aren’t always many options of what you can actually drink. So we put the same time, effort and intent into creating our spirit-free versions. This way everybody that is drinking or not drinking will have exactly the same experience.

Can you give us an example of this from the menu?

My personal favourite is I Feel For You, a whisky highball. It’s a very strikingly beautiful drink in a mug made with traditional whisky with three frozen melon spheres in it. It looks beautiful and we wanted to create the same drink in a spirit-free version. We replaced the whiskey with the Lyre’s American Malt, which is 0.5% alcohol, but we kept exactly the same preparation for the soda, the cantaloupe cordial and the frozen melon spears, and serve it in the same glassware. Side by side both versions look the same, and they taste the same except one is without alcohol. So a guest ordering the spirit-free version has exactly the same experience as someone drinking the alcoholic version.

It’s clear this isn’t just a hotel bar, you also want it to be a destination, so what kind of guests are coming in?

Saikindo has different vibes in different spaces so guests can find what’s right for them. They can choose a space that’s cozy, or they can have a dining experience. The main hifi bar is for expats that are coming to have a great drink, party, laugh, dance, see our DJ behind the bar! The lounge and the terrace tend to attract local communities and big groups. Every single area of Saikindo is giving you different vibes. So our guests are very mixed.

Finally, it’s less than a year since you launched but what’s your ambition for the bar?

I want people to leave the bar and say, “what the hell just happened?” That’s the wow effect. We want to create these moments for our guests. Me and Bob we want to create the most hospitable bar we can, where everybody that walks in has the best time they can in Abu Dhabi. Then when people think where they want to drink in Abu Dhabi, the first thing they think of is Saikindo.

As we mentioned it’s early days but what else can we look forward to at Saikindo?

We’re working on live events, focusing pretty much on music and rather than doing traditional bar takeovers with bartenders, we’re thinking about music takeovers with guest DJs from other bars or other venues. We’re also working on a new menu to launch later this year. And we’ll be opening a bar area for highballs and martinis using Japanese spirits and sodas, because a lot of our guests are now drinking these so we want to expand that offering. 

Lastly, it’s lovely the way you talk about guests. Yes, drinks are important, but you’ve just got so many touch points for the guest experience

I think it’s necessary to look at guests differently. When you stop looking at them as paying customers and start looking at them as people, you realise that drinks are only one thing they look forward to when they come to a bar. They’re looking for a place where they can relax or have fun or wind down. It’s up to us understand them as people, what they are looking for and give them the best experience we can. Yes, drinks are super important, but they are one ingredient of the full recipe.

How do we make them feel welcome and comfortable? How do we make sure that the light is right for everybody? That the music is not too loud to have a great conversation while still enjoying it and not hearing the next table. We’ve considered every detail in Saikindo for the best guest experience.

That about wraps it up Marco but one last question– we love the whole concept, so when are you bringing it to London?

I’ve been saying I that I’ve wanted to come back to London for many years, I miss London, so we’ll see!

For details of Saikindo visit Saikindo at Four Seasons Abu Dhabi

We originally visited Saikindo in January, but due to the recent unrest in the surrounding region we felt, after discussion with Marco Corallo and the Four Seasons team, that it was not appropriate to publish this feature until now.

Founded in 2020, Lisa created Free AF with one goal in mind, to provide a range of alcohol-free cocktails for those who take what they drink seriously. But more than producing great tasting liquids, a range with complexity, texture and attitude, the brand was born with a greater mission – to create a movement for making non-drinking aspirational.

Listen to this special episode on your favourite podcast channel or direct right here…

In just 5 years Free AF has built a global following for its alcohol-free cocktails – as well as being the No.1 non-alcoholic ready-to-drink brand in New Zealand, it’s one of the fastest growing non-alc RTD’s in the USA, has been endorsed by Khloe Kardashian and Kris Jenner and is listed in Morrison in the UK. What’s all the fuss about? That’s what we’re speaking to her about in this episode.

Tune in wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts or via the link above.

For more information on Free AF, visit af-drinks.com

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